Farkhunda nodded, gagged, and nodded some more.
Ali Ansari came over and started the video game.
* * *
Hunter Two-One ran through rubble and shrapnel and automatic gunfire toward a rooftop fortification overlooking a village tucked between stone and sky. He was limping from a gunshot wound and his voice relayed through the radio was heavy and raspy. He held before him a small green briefcase, handling it like a waiter holding a tray. He climbed the broken ladder at the back of the charred mud house. It connected to a ramp leading to a sanctuary. He dragged his dirty and muddy body to a small viewing hole in the northeastern corner and blinked hot and desperate a few times, gazing out at a caravan of trucks coming toward the village, the beds of the trucks filled with turbaned men. His health meter was running low and the screen was red to indicate his likely imminent death. Hunter Two-One opened up his briefcase. It revealed a small stick and a series of lit-up buttons. He put his hand on the controls and pressed a button.
The screen switched to black-and-white, a slightly digitized satellite view of the village and the surrounding environs. There was a metallic hum in the background. The little mud structures of the village were highlighted with complicated alphanumeric text. Little red squares started to ping over each one of the villagers riding in the trucks. And the squares became red halos as villagers stepped off the trucks and started milling about and talking in some foreign tongue that sounded like barking dogs and bleating goats.
“Neutralize all enemies,” came the order over the radio. “Hunter Two-One! Blow them to sticks! Keep them away from our boys!”
Hunter Two-One pressed a button. The screen switched to the camera affixed to the incoming projectile. The ground came closer and closer. Hunter Two-One used his stick to deliver the payload in the tightest grouping of red halos. The camera shifted back to the earlier screen, the one with the metallic hum in the background.
“Direct hit,” congratulated the voice. “Ten-plus kills. Good job!”
When all the turbaned men were dead, the screen snapped back to the earlier one. The health meter was at a comfortable green, getting fuller with each kill. Over the next five minutes Hunter Two-One proceeded to launch a series of five or six more missiles from the robot hovering overhead. The kills were confirmed by the disembodied voice of the captain. Five-plus kills, ten-plus kills, fifteen-plus kills. There was no certainty to the count. There was no certainty to the destruction. Trucks, camels, sheep, women, children, other such nonessentials. The goal was to have a higher kill percentage than Ali Ansari. In this I succeeded.
At the end of the mission the drone hovered into sight and the American flag fluttered above the shattered village. A cut scene showed Hunter Two-One going home. The skyline suggested he was from Philadelphia. But it could’ve been any other American city. Just as Hunter Two-One could’ve been any American.
Ali Ansari and I rained drones well into the morning.
Farkhunda fellated Tot nearly as long. Every now and then I was compelled to look over. His cock was the longest I had ever seen, a snake that Farkhunda nuzzled like a scarf around her neck. Once she caught me looking, put the long cock around her face, and asked if I liked her hijab.
* * *
I woke up in a heap of tawny bodies. It had to be a little before dawn. Groggily I searched for Ali Ansari. He was awake, standing in a corner of the room, bowing and prostrating, murmuring and whispering, lost in prayer. My only recent experience with Islamic prayer had been through Qasim, whose aim had been to sell it, who had made it appear like a performance. Ali Ansari’s prayer wasn’t like that. It was a purposeful abstention from everything, a temporary secession from the world of will and violence. I wondered if he experienced something mighty in there. Or perhaps it was simply the harmonious hum of nothingness. Even that wouldn’t be so bad. Isn’t that what we sought when we read Proust, for example? I looked away. People didn’t like being stared at when they were reading.
There was stirring among the bodies. It was Farkhunda. She was in panties and a men’s button-down shirt. Her neck and thighs had bite marks all over. She hopped onto the sofa and hurriedly put on her shoes, at the same time trying to shake Tot awake so he could drive her home. She had the car keys in hand.
“Just drive yourself.”
“I can’t. Don’t have a license. Not even a permit.”
“I thought these things were only kind of illegal.”
“The cops out here sit at the intersections waiting to jump on us. It’s discrimination.”
Farkhunda went off to look for Ali Ansari. When she saw he was in the middle of prayer she let out a moan. She threw the keys to the ground and sat on the sofa, staring at her phone, waiting for the inevitable call from home.
“Get up.” I swept up the keys and her wrist in the same move and dragged her to the car. “I’ll take you. Just tell me the directions.”
We flew through the winding streets. The atmosphere had a subdued morbidity to it, the trees looming, the streets disappearing into fog-filled turns, the stop signs having been decapitated by rapscallion children. The fear of Farkhunda’s authority figures only added to the trepidation in the air.
“Your mom is kind of bossy then?”
“It’s my sister. She’s a bitch.”
“She’s protective?”
“She’s religious. She used to be normal. But when my dad got taken, she changed. Now she thinks women represent honor and other shit like that. And we should be covered head to toe and we shouldn’t date or talk to boys or eat anything but halal. It’s all her Islam. It’s too much.”
“What do you think women represent?”
“Whatever the fuck we want. Just like men. We are equal.”
“But Tot doesn’t treat you like an equal.”
She turned to me with a pitying expression, the kind of know-it-all smugness that teenagers tend to assume. “Do you think I don’t cheat on Tot? At the end of the day, no one treats each other equal. What matters is whether you are getting shamed in the process or not. Islam shames its women. That’s why I don’t believe in it. It’s built on the idea of sin. That your fuck-ups have a greater meaning. They can’t just be fuck-ups. Sin doesn’t let you forgive yourself until others forgive you.”
I grew somber. “I hope that one day no one has to live in shame.”
Her face was jaded. “Won’t happen. The world is Shameistan. Anyway, there’s my sister, my executioner.”
I looked in the sister’s direction. It took a moment to register that it was Sister Saba. I immediately lowered myself into the seat.
“What’s the matter with you?” Farkhunda said.
“Your sister. I know her.”
“You’ve met her before?” she nearly yelled, putting out a hand to help me steer. “I didn’t know you were one of the fundamentalists. By your age the fundamentalism disappears. They call it Salafi Burnout.”
“I’m not a Salafi,” I said. “I’m not even sure if I’m Muslim.”
“Of course you are. You have a Muslim name. That’s all you need to be Muslim. Anyway, I don’t know why, but you knowing my sister is kind of hot. Isn’t it?”
“Is it?” I said, peeking over the wheel, slowing the car even further, rotating my eyes in her direction.
Farkhunda put her tongue in her cheek and nodded. “Remember earlier? When Tot dropped me and parked on the other side? You do the same. I’ll just go inside and come back. Over there, around the corner. Got it?”
“But why?”
She popped her mouth with a finger and told me I wouldn’t regret it.